Bellingham artist captures Cascades in watercolors

MAX BITTLE | MAX BITTLE THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

• Sibyl Sanford watercolors

• MEET SIBYL SANFORD

  What: Artist reception and book release for Sibyl Sanford.
  When: 7 to 9 p.m., Friday, Oct. 10.
  Where: Blue Horse Gallery, 301 W. Holly St.
  Details: Her exhibit, "Sibyl Sanford: Painting the Spirit Within," runs through Nov. 8.
  Coming up: Sanford will discuss her book and painting at 7 p.m. Oct 16 at Village Books.
  
  

"You can achieve nuances," she said. "You can allow shapes to gradually disappear. It's almost like music."

She also plays music, as you might have guessed. The piano.

Sanford has gathered 78 of her favorite works for a beautiful book she just published, "Painting the Spirit Within, the Watercolors of Sibyl Sanford." A related gallery exhibit opens Friday, Oct. 10, and she'll discuss her book Oct. 16 at Village Books.

Sanford grew up in Connecticut. She started painting as a child, often outdoors alongside her father, himself an amateur painter.

"That was a tremendously bonding experience for me," she said. "I've been painting ever since."

In 1971, while a college student, she came to Washington for a summer job in North Cascades National Park. She had loved the outdoors in New England, but was thunderstruck by the alpine meadows and rugged peaks of the Cascades.

If the New England countryside is tantamount to "chamber music," she said, then the Cascades are a "symphony."

She finished her bachelor's degree in art in Maine, then moved to Bellingham for her teaching certificate at Western Washington University. The Northwest, she had decided, would be home.

At first, she taught reading and drawing at Lummi Tribal School, then she opened an art school in 1990. Solo and juried exhibits of her work soon followed, and her paintings now grace collections in North America, Europe and Australia.

Many of her paintings are of Northwest landscapes, flowers, and local people and animals. In them, she uses subtle shading and soft edges to suggest an inner glow.

"It's my feeling that all living things have soul," Sanford said. "Every living thing is a conductor of divinity."

She pondered the idea of a book for years, but wasn't settled on an idea. Meanwhile, she collected inspirational sayings by noted people both living and dead. Her book vision coalesced last year on the Oregon coast when she saw prints and books by nature photographer Christopher Burkett.

"He was very spiritual and he expressed it by light," Sanford said. "Seeing that someone else had the courage to pursue their highest vision gave me the courage to do the same."

Befitting her in-the-moment approach to life and art, Sanford's book is spare on text but full of art and wise sayings.

Readers also benefit from four pages that show, step-by-step, how she painted a Chuckanut landscape, and an index that details the background of each painting in the book.

Before she paints her landscapes, Sanford immerses herself in the setting, taking many photographs and observing the scene up close. Before she paints her portraits, she spends considerable time with the subject.

When she sits down to paint, she hopes to recreate her sense of being in the place, of knowing the person.

"I always paint what causes me to experience emotion," she said. "In other words, I paint what I love."